Hardcore
gamers and eBay speculators lined up at Game Stop and EB Game stores
across the country on October 10, 2006. With the size of the lines
wrapping around the block you might think they were there get their
hands on Sony’s Blu-ray based Playstation 3 video game system, however
the system doesn’t hit the streets in the USA until November 17, 2006.
So why the lines a month before the launch date? These game fanatics
were there in hopes of being lucky enough to plunk down a $100 deposit
to reserve one of the only 400,000 Sony Playstation 3 consoles
available November 17 in the USA.

With a receipt in hand, that is as coveted as a golden Willy Wonka
ticket, many of the 6 to 15 lucky gamers at each store headed
immediately to their computers to log on to eBay. By the droves, eBay
filled up with auctions and “buy it now” postings for PS3 units that
were not even in the hands of the people listing the auctions. Auctions
with “buy it now” prices as high as $10,000 were hitting eBay, with
several listings for $4,000 to $6,000. The $10,000 auction was geared
towards rap and sports stars who want to be the first one with the
system, and the seller even promised to fly it personally to the winner
as soon as it is available.

eBay became aware of this situation and began removing these
pre-release auctions through their VERO system for fear that they could
possibly be fraudulent. Although ticket owners are guaranteed a system,
there is also a chance that the lucky few that have Game Stop or EB
Games receipts will not get their system on or around the launch date.
eBay, knowing this does not want to subject their users to purchasing
items for great sums of money only to find out there will be a huge
delay in shipping them to the auction winners.

The
general consensus among gamers is that the only way to get a system
will be to camp out in advance, be lucky enough to get in on one of the
various pre-orders at stores like Toys R’ Us, Wal Mart etc, or pay
through the nose on eBay for one. Once the frenzy of the launch morning
sales are over and the first batch of PS3s are on the street, expect to
see another surge of listings for the systems on eBay. Besides dealing
with a shortage of PS3 systems due to a lack of blue laser diodes for
the Blu-ray drives, Sony also faces competition from the new Nintendo
Wii system. Priced much lower than the $599 deluxe PS3 unit, Nintendo’s
next generation system simply called Wii (pronounced like the French
word for yes "oui”) is geared more towards young gamers with more
cartoon-like graphics, and has a price tag of only $250. Where the PS3
can be a pivotal part of a home theater system with its Blu-ray based
drive and HDMI high-definition capable output, the Wii, is a game only
system without a DVD player but features a new one of a kind motion
sensitive remote control. On a sports game such as tennis, swinging the
wireless remote makes the player on screen swing at the ball. Swinging
the nun-chuck attachment around makes the character Link on the new
Legend of Zelda game swing his sword or cast his fishing pole to fish
for food. This revolutionary game controller had people lined up
waiting for hours to play the system at the E3 videogame expo in Los
Angeles earlier this year.

Sony’s stock took a hit as
news hit Wall Street about the small numbers of systems that will be
available at launch. Nintendo took that as an opportunity to let the
gaming world know that they would be upping production of their much
easier to produce Wii to roll out 4 million systems by the end of the
year in the US, while experts expect around 600,000 PS3s to be on the
streets by the end of this year. Sony is doing the first ever worldwide
simu-lanch of a system in the same week and expect to have 2,000,0000
systems worldwide, most of these being in Japan. Some US gamers have
said if they can’t get their hands on a US PS 3, they will purchase a
Japanese version and a voltage converter.

Reports that the PS3 actually costs Sony around $900 per system makes
one wonder why they are pushing this game format at all. However what
they are doing with this system is putting a Blu-ray Trojan horse into
what will be millions of homes by the end of 2007. Many gamers don’t
have HDTV’s at home yet but will someday soon realize that the same
Blu-ray discs they covet at retailers such as Best Buy and Amazon.com
will play on their video game system too.